Windows Phone 7 RTM'd

Redmond-based software giant Microsoft announced on Wednesday that its latest mobile operating system, dubbed Windows Phone 7, has been released to manufacturing (RTM).

In other words, the company managed to move closer to completing the testing of the solution and towards its integration with hardware solutions from partners, and all that remains to be seen from now on is when the first device running under it would land on shelves.

“Today is the day that the Windows Phone team has been driving towards, and we’re very excited to say that we’ve reached the biggest milestone for our internal team – the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7,” Terry Myerson announced in a recent post on the Windows Phone Blog.

The latest flavor of Microsoft's mobile OS promises a great change on the company's approach towards the mobile space.

When compared to the previous versions of the solution, known as Windows Mobile, the new OS iteration brings a brand new UI, along with under the hood modifications, and a new development environment.

Moreover, starting with Windows Phone 7, Microsoft imposed a minimum of hardware requirements for the devices that its partners would bring to the market.

Delivered to the market one year after the last Windows Mobile flavor landed, Windows Mobile 6.5, the new Windows Phone 7 is set to prove that Microsoft can be competitive on the mobile space, and that it can provide a great mobile OS to users.

Thus, it got the new solution through a long testing process, which included the availability of a wide range of WP7 mobile phones into the handset of various people out there, something we've already reported on.

“We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes,” Terry Myerson stated.

As stated above, Microsoft still hasn't confirmed an exact commercial release date for the Windows Phone 7 platform, though it did say at one point that October should be the lucky time frame for enthusiasts.